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3Dponics in Space

The ability to grow food is crucial for any long-term mission to space, and it’s currently one of the biggest obstacles for space travel.

It costs about $10,000 to send one pound of food to the International Space Station

It’s no surprise then that the average astronaut diet consists mainly of dense, high-calorie foods that have a long shelf life—far from the lettuce, zucchinis and other fresh veggies we’re used to here on Earth.

BUILDING THE MOST EFFICIENT SPACE FARM

3Dponics is going to change all of that. In our latest pursuit, we are trying to create the most practical and efficient garden that can be used not just on Earth, but in space as well. And that’s where you come in.

We need members of our community to help us transform 3Dponics into a functional and efficient space farm, which can be printed and assembled in space, thereby offering astronauts a continuous source of fresh food.

If you’re thinking we’re out of this world with our ideas, consider that NASA has already been researching and testing such systems for years…all with huge success.

The knowledge that we are gaining is enabling us to extend our exploration and future colonization of space. — Shane Topham, Engineer at Space Dynamics Laboratory (Utah State University)

THE 3DPONICS ONLINE COMMUNITY

Everyone has valuable ideas, skills, experiences and creativity that they can contribute to this process. If we all work together and use our collective knowledge, we can achieve something that even big organizations like NASA can’t do because they simply don’t have access to so many people with so many ideas.

So, whatever it is that brings humans to space—whether it be deteriorating conditions on Earth or just sheer curiosity—there is one indisputable truth: we need to be able to grow food because there’s no guarantee that the conditions we find on foreign planets will be conducive to agriculture.

The first humans to live on Mars might not be astronauts, but farmers.